Paddocks to Pasture & Poor Megs

Poor Megs!
Just took off the skin so it's really superficial
but it could have been a lot worse if she had
gotten really tangled

 What was that I was saying about doing today what you can put off until tomorrow? Especially when it comes to fencing... We had a funny summer, couple dry periods but when it rained it poured! And all that water sitting in the ditch really compromised the dividing fence, so it was falling down & getting looser and looser.

I had it on my T.D.B.W. (to do before winter) list, but apparently I didn't get around to it soon enough.

You can see bits of her hair are still on
the fence

It didn't take too much to find out where she'd gone through the fence. Right beside the feed bucket, so she probably aimed an air-kick (she rarely actually kicks other animals, but she likes to show off) at someone and missed.

 So, I push aside other things that needed to be done and got straight to taking care of this fence before anyone else got hurt. It took hours and hours of back-breaking, hand-killing, I'm still soar the next day work. It's all down and out of the field but our yard looks like a I'm showcasing some sort of red-neck art installation.

I was trying to clip the fence at each post, but so many of the posts were rotten off at the bottom they broke when I tried to get the fence off them. These got rolled into the fencing so I removed the whole thing from the field in 4 big chunks. Plus digging out the 3 pieces of re-bar holding up extra fencing in the ditch between paddocks (I understand why those were there, but an extra long T-post would have gotten that job done better & safer!). I also got the last of the galvanized wire off the bottom line around the paddock, it was still in good (tight) shape, but we weren't using it.

For the winter we've got one big pasture, which is just fine. It was about time for the horses to start coming into the barn for meals (need to do that so I can change blankets when it's cold) and the only time I was splitting up the animals was to feed Maddie anyway. I'd still like to confine the cows in a paddock over winter, so they don't damage the grass; but based on what I've seen at other farms, cows don't really stray from the warm barn unless forced once snow hits the ground.

Meg is all cleaned up now, took some coercion on my part (not a fan of spray-things), but relatively painless all around. If the wound had been any deeper or I had found it sooner it would have been a vet call to close it all the way. As it was the wound was already mostly closed and had stopped bleeding (she probably did it overnight). She's also mostly sound on the leg and still running around like an idiot just in case the vet does come. So I sprayed some Iodine to keep it from infection and applied a liquid bandage for livestock (the silver) to keep it closed.

Flashy Girl!

I could have wrapped the wound but I know the goats/Meg would have taken that off very quickly so this was a better option (plus I'd have to catch her twice a day to change the bandage, eating up time I don't have). I would cold hose it but we've had a big temp drop in the last few days so that is already keeping the swelling down. Hopefully it will close and heal just fine, although she'll probably have a little scar where the biggest part of the wound is. Keeping her outside, and all the blood flowing through the leg as she moves is the best thing to do now that it's covered. I'll be keeping a really good eye on her leg for the next few days, watching for swelling, oozing, and if I'm going to need to reapply the bandage (if we do get either, I'll have the vet out for antibiotics).

We're definitely keeping the liquid livestock bandage in the first-aid trunk from now on. It wasn't cheap ($20 for a small can) but the amount of time/wraps it's going to save me, it was definitely worth it!